BANGUI – Long months of fighting in Central African Republic have resulted in the destruction of almost all mosques in the tiny African country, leaving a huge Muslim population with no worshipping places.

The devastation “kind of crazy, chilling”, Samantha Power, the US Ambassador to the UN spoke to reporters on Tuesday after a Security Council visit last week to the country, Aljazeera reported.

Power added that the outcome of months of war was widely noticed in mosques of the country.

During UN envoys visit to the country last month, the US envoy said that 417 of the country’s mosques have been destroyed.

She visited the one remaining Muslim neighbourhood in the capital, Bangui, and described the residents as “a terrified population”.

In PK5, the only Muslim district in the capital, Muslim women, terrified to leave for donning hijab, were forced to give birth in their homes instead of hospitals.

After France and European Union decisions to pull peacekeepers, Power expected the situation to get worse.

France had sent 2,000 troops to its former colony.

“That’s a big drop-off in capability,” she said.

The UN peacekeeping force remains at about 80 percent of its planned strength of about 10,000, Power said.

The UN secretary-general last month asked for more than 1,000 additional peacekeepers, and Power said the council is “very favorably disposed” to the request.

She added that the combined forces have “averted a worst-case scenario,” but the country’s roving armed groups remain armed.

CAR, a mineral-rich, landlocked country, descended into anarchy in March of 2013 when Seleka rebels ousted François Bozize, a Christian, who had come to power in the 2003 coup.

Over the past months, anti-balaka Christian militias have raided Muslim homes killing children and women and looting and vandalizing properties.

Along with killing, kidnapping, torture and arbitrary arrest and detention, in the war-torn CAR, a UN investigation found evidences of sexual violence.

According to the UN, more than one million have been internally displaced since the eruption of violence in December 2012.

Inter-religious violence has claimed thousands of lives and displaced a million people in the population of 4.6 million, yet such clashes are unprecedented in the poor, landlocked country.